Proton Mail Rolls Out Feature to Have AI Write Emails for You
AI is here whether you want it or not. However, Proton is taking a privacy-first path with the Proton Scribe AI feature in Proton Mail.
Writing emails all day can be daunting and eat up valuable time. To help, this week, Proton announced the launch of Proton Scribe, an integrated and privacy-focused AI-powered writing assistant for Proton Mail. The feature will draft emails using natural language prompts.
With it, you can change the email’s tone and proofread it using the privacy-focused AI feature. Here is a look at what you can expect with Proton Scribe.
Proton Scribe Rolling Out for Proton Mail
While you may not be happy with AI integration in all your tech experiences, it is the future. So, Proton is introducing the Proton Scribe AI-powered writing assistant for Proton Mail.
Like other AI chatbots, Proton Scribe can draft emails and is built on open-source models. The feature works like other chatbots you may have used: You give it a prompt, and it generates text for you to send emails more quickly. It is available for web and app users.
I may have buried the lead here, but the privacy built into this feature is essential. For instance, Proton Scribe never sends your email data to the cloud. As other services like Gmail and Outlook may do, Scribe never uses your data to train AI models or share it with third parties.
Privacy-Minded AI Writing Assistance
In addition, Proton Scribe runs on the company’s no-log servers, and encrypts your emails during transit. It immediately discards them once you’re done.
Proton support notes, “This ensures your prompts and generated email drafts never leave your device until you send the email, which will be end-to-end encrypted if sent to another Proton or PGP user or zero-access encrypted on our servers if not.”
Proton Scribe will be available for existing Proton Visionary and Lifetime Proton Mail plan users. However, it will only be available as a $2.99 add-on for business customers, including Mail Essentials, Mail Professional, and Proton Business Suite plans. Proton doesn’t mention if the privacy-focused AI feature will be included for Proton users with free accounts.
Proton has been making news lately, including introducing its privacy-first Proton Docs service in Proton Drive to compete with Google Docs. It also announced backup encryption support for iPhones. You can now back up photos on your iPhone automatically using end-to-end encryption in Proton Drive. Also, a few months back, passkey support for Proton Pass was added.
I also expect Proton Scribe to roll out the Scribe feature to its Proton Docs service. It would also be welcome if Proton Mail included it with the free version. However, that remains to be seen, but we’ll make sure to keep you up to date on developments.
Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay, and for services like Copilot or Perplexity, AI has some glaring security omissions. However, Proton is working on building a privacy-first approach to AI, and we’re happy about that!